Minimum Wage

After the President's state of the union proposal to raise the minimum wage to 9$ an hour and tie future increases to the cost of living, some Republicans (including Speaker Boehner) balked at this proposal. Tying the increase of minimum wage to the consumer price index would take away a key bargaining chip for those opposed to increasing wages. Ironically, it was Governor Romney who originally proposed this, but the Republicans still disapprove.

Fiscal conservatives should be for raising the minimum wage because at its current levels the government is forced to subsidize workers living below the poverty level. At a purely philosophical level as well a working person should not be subjected to living in poverty. Raising the minimum wage would increase revenue in taxes and decrease welfare spending, so this should be a no-brainer deal for Republicans.

However, a somewhat legitimate argument against raising the minimum wage is that it would reduce employment. This is a contested point as there is evidence on both sides of the debate. I am not an economist so I will not get into this point but in short the evidence seems to imply that greatly increasing the minimum wage would have an effect on employment but not a substantial one. Additionally from an ideological standpoint the question is simple. What is the point of having a job if it does not even pay you the cost of living? Wasn't this the point of the minimum wage in the first place?

Raising the minimum wage to 9$ an hour is extremely reasonable considering that, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the minimum wage would be $21.72 an hour if it had raised at the same rate as worker productivity and $10.52 an hour if it had kept up with inflation since it peaked in the 1960's. Finally, tying the minimum wage to CPI is a simple solution that President Obama and Governor Romney agreed on that would allow workers to not have suffer for congress's hostage taking and lack of action.